She shrugged. “Hard to argue.” And walked up to her office.
When Roarke came in two hours later, she’d gone through a pot of coffee, and set up a trio of auxiliary boards. She sat at her desk, boots up, eyes closed.
“I’m not asleep.”
“All right then. You’ve been busy.”
She opened her eyes, studied the new boards as he did. “One for residents—including day staff—one for hotel employees—including subcontractors. One for visitors and outside vendors, delivery people who came in during the relevant time frame.”
“That would be near to three thousand people, I expect. You’re handling all this?”
“Peabody’s got the hotel staff, and since Baxter and Trueheart are finished with the art gallery, they’re taking the vendors and deliveries, the visitors. I want the visual, and I’ll eliminate as they do.
“Screwed up your schedule today,” she said.
“A breech in my security screwed up my schedule, and now that it’s nearly on track again, I want a glass of wine and some food.”
“Gotta feed the cat,” Eve said absently. “He came in a little bit after I did, settled down for one of his marathon naps, so Summerset wouldn’t have dealt with it.”
She rose, wandered to the boards. “I’ve eliminated a good chunk of residents. Kids, elderly, women. Both wits were absolute on the male. And there are more than a few whose out-of-town status checks out. I’ve crossed off a couple more with solid alibis. Still working on that.”
“Here. Diffuse the coffee you’ve been pounding.” He handed her the glass, kissed the top of her head. “I’ll take half after we’ve had some dinner.”
“It wasn’t really a breech in your security.”
“Close enough.”
She followed him into the kitchen, and the cat—sensing the dinner bell—came with her. “You can’t have alarms going off every time a light flickers,” she pointed out.
“True enough.” He stopped to study the finger painting she’d stuck on the friggie. “This is . . . interesting.”
“Mavis brought Bella by my office and the kid gave me this, wanted me to put it up. Summerset said this is how it’s done.”
“Ah. A bold use of color and texture. Perhaps she’s a budding student of the Pollock school.”
“It’s the house.” Eve stepped up, tapped the painting. “And this is me, you, the cat, Summerset.”
Roarke looked closer, then stepped back, trying distance. “You see that?”
“You don’t?” Then with a laugh, she got the kibble. “The kid explained. Did you know Mavis is performing at the Oscar deal?”
Roarke angled his head, still studying the finger painting. “I did, yes.”
“I should’ve known. It’s a big deal for her, so I should’ve known.”
“You don’t pay attention to such things, and Mavis wouldn’t expect you to. You pay attention enough to hang this artwork, and that’s considerably more important, I’d think.”
“It’s not exactly the heart of the house though, is it?”
He turned to her, slid a finger down the dent in her chin. “This house has many hearts.”
Her face cleared. “It does, doesn’t it?”
While the cat attacked the kibble—with a chaser of salmon, they had stew, a comfort at the end of a dreary day.
“How would you have gotten in there?” she asked him. “Into Banks’s place, if you didn’t live in the building?”
“Likely I’d have had time to plan—so there are a number of ways. But in this case, we’re talking of the moment.” He considered as he ate a good, chunky chicken stew generous with dumplings.
“I wouldn’t have complicated it with elevator security and jammers. How long, after all, did it take you to track his coming and going?”
“I still don’t know who he is.”
“But you already know his methods, his skills, and you know he entered the building by normal means.” He gestured to her board. “He’s on one of them.”
“Okay, so what’s the alternate method?”
“Up the outside.”
“Get out! It’s over fifty floors,” she pointed out, and got a shrug.
“The height’s hardly a deterrent with the proper tools. With electronic gloves, booties, it’s simply a matter of choosing your time, then moving steadily up. Again, between the glass to avoid being spotted. I’d have done it after midnight, and when I’d reached the terrace, dealing with those locks is, well, cake as we say. Nothing nearly as complex as the main doors.
“Go in,” he added, topping off the wine, “do my search. Not sloppily. Why alert the cops the moment they step in the door? Be subtle about it—after all, no one’s going to disturb me, and I’m not meeting the man I intend to kill for some time yet. Take what I need, as well as any cash I find as it’s not traceable. I don’t bother with a painting. Then I take my leave the same way.”
He toasted her with his wine. “However, if I’d targeted such a place, it would be for the valuables, so I’d take what I came for. The method would be the same.”
“You’ve actually done that? Climbed up a building?”
“It’s exhilarating. The dark, the air, the life going on below, and on the other side of the wall. All unaware of you. And unlike you, I enjoy heights.”
She thought about it as she ate. “They’re not professional thieves. Already knew that, but what you’re saying caps it. They worked out what to do on the fly. It worked, but you’re right. They’re on the board. Along with a couple thousand others, but they’re on the board.”
“Before they went into that apartment to remove whatever Banks might have that connects them to him, your suspect range was a great deal wider.”
“That’s a point.” She polished off her stew. “Now I’m going to narrow it.”
With focused work she eliminated more than two hundred on her board. Deleted names from the other boards through reports from the rest of the team.
She started a priority list on anyone who’d had military or paramilitary training or had relatives who did.
Roarke worked along with her, then broke to take a scheduled tag from Hawaii. When he came back, she had her head on the desk.
Out, he thought, and ordered her machine to continue her work on auto.
She stirred and mumbled when he lifted her out of her chair. “I’m good.”
“Good and tired.”
“I’ve got eighteen on the priority list. There are going to be more.”
“You’ll get back to that after some sleep.” He carried her to the elevator, ordered their bedroom.
“I’m closer than I was.”
“My book says you’ll be closer yet tomorrow.”
He sat her on the side of the bed—the cat was already sprawled dead center. Pulled off her boots, ordered the fire on.
“What if a big gust of wind blew you off the side of the building?”
Back to that, are we? he thought. “I’d have been very annoyed.”
“I mean . . .” She pulled herself up to strip off her weapon harness. “Did you wear a chute?”
“That would depend on the job.”
Groggy, she undressed, pulled on a sleep shirt. “Who’s the one who . . .” She made a whoosh sound, flipped out her fingers, mimed climbing a wall.
He thought it a wonder he followed her. “Spider-Man.”
“Yeah, yeah. He’s a good one. Smart-ass kid. At least you didn’t go swinging around buildings on web ropes.”
Something in his smile had her eyeing him as she crawled into bed. “You didn’t do that. There aren’t really web ropes.”
“There are cables, pulley systems—and those are stories for another time.”
He slipped in with her, wrapped an arm around her to tuck her close. “Go to sleep.”
“You never did that in New York. I’d’ve heard about it.”
“Not if I did it right.” He kissed the back of her neck as she dropped off. “And I did.”
* * *
When she woke in the morning, he sat drinking coffee, watching the financials with the cat stretched out beside him.
She sat up. “It wasn’t a Spider-Man suit.”
He glanced over. “Wasn’t it?”
“It was black—but he has a black one, too, I guess. It’s confusing. But it had an R—for Roarke—instead of the spider deal. And you’re swinging over the damn city and climbing up buildings, and there was a big gust of wind. It scared the shit out of me. Don’t do that again.”
“I’ll resist. Though you do have the most fascinating dreams.”
She grabbed coffee, gulping it as she headed for the shower.
When she came back he had breakfast waiting, more coffee, and had banished the cat to the spot in front of the fire.
The oatmeal didn’t surprise her—winter couldn’t end soon enough—but at least it was just a cup of it and it came with bacon and eggs.
“We’re in for a bright, if blustery, day,” he told her.
She thought of the financials on the screen. “Anything up there these guys would be interested in?”
“There’s always something, but there’s nothing major coming to boil at the moment.”
“You’re always buying stuff—companies.”
“And you’re worried they might try for one of mine. We’ve taken precautions—and all my people are accounted for.”
“You’ve got a lot of people.”
“And still, they’re accounted for. Add to it, I don’t have anything brewing in New York right now. A thing or two pending overseas or off-planet, but nothing here.”
“And you’re not going anywhere, like to oversee one of those pendings?”